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Customer said my shutter calibration was off by 1/3 stop
A wedding photographer sent me side-by-side shots from my CLA job and his backup body, and he was right - my 1/125 was actually 1/100. Changed how I test now, I run three different shutter speeds at multiple apertures instead of just checking one. Anyone else double-check their calibration with customer feedback or just trust the numbers?
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nancy1542d agoMost Upvoted
Roger Cicala wrote about this once, really opened my eyes.
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baker.phoenix2d ago
Yeah that guy could make a box of rocks sound fascinating.
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@nancy154 nailed it with that Cicala mention, I saw that same post and it made me realize how easy it is to miss small stuff when you're just trusting the numbers. For me, I started doing a full sequence of 1/1000, 1/125, and 1/15 at f/2.8, f/5.6, and f/11 after that wedding photographer called me out. The 1/3 stop thing is actually pretty common once you look close, I got a Minolta once that was off by almost a full stop at high speeds but perfect at low ones. Roger's point about testing in real conditions not just the bench really stuck with me, and now I keep a dummy camera body around just to shoot test frames before I ship anything back out.
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